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[AmPM]

Hell yea, it took me FOREVER but I got a 3 HEAT Tiger Coy. Was it amazing, yes, yes it was.

[tank130]

I may well do - that I do not dispute.

But please, don't make laughable statements such as the mod shouldn't aim to retain it's current playerbase as well as increasing it. Going for a purely casual playerbase may well result in a dead mod entirely due to the fact it's purely casual. It only plays every once in a while - and what are the odds the "once in a whiles" coincide for a big enough number of people? Pretty low, I'd think.

Ok, now we can have a conversation worth our while.

I did not say we should not retain our player base. You are talking in extremes and that will not benefit anybody. What I am suggesting is we should be doing more to lessen the gap between new players and old.

What I have suggested is we make vet the goal. Veterancy is the reward for playing well and being good at it. We should not be rewarded for the number of games played, we should be rewarded for our abilities.

Doctrines give each player the ability to customize their army to their play style. Choose your doctrine at the start, have most of the abilities available and customize your company as you wish. This still allows players like yourself to create companies I would call spam, but does not reward you for just playing a lot of games.

What I am suggesting reduces the gap between new players and old, still gives you the ability to create any kind of company you want, and rewards players for good play.

I truly fail to see why you think this is not a good direction to go.
 
VCoH is why we are all here. This mod would not exist with out it. I have not looked for awhile, but I believe the player base is in the ten's of thousands. There you are not rewarded for the amount of games played, but for your abilities on the battle field. Whether that be spam, or just great strategy. VCoH does not differentiate between the new and old players.
We have taken this mod to a higher level and tried separate ourselves from the bullshit of VCoH. We have added persistency to make our companies feel more personal and have more control.

So I am going to assume that we will agree that Company of Heroes is a successful game.
 
I pose this question:
Why would we ignore the fact that skill over games played is what makes VCoH so popular? Even though there is no gap between new and old players other than skill, the game is still going strong and continues to garner profits? I think CoH proves that casual game play is a successful market to capture.

[Mysthalin]

I do agree with you that the grind should be killed, shot in the face three or four more times just to make sure, cremated and then it's ashes scattered over the surface of Jupiter. It's not fun for quite frankly anybody. The devs share this opinion - and there's a system being put into place(or so I've heard) to ensure the grind does indeed die. A horrible and painful death, at that.

I disagree on the point of veterancy though. It doesn't take much skill to vet units up : you just need to press "T" early enough - the vet will come eventually : and it shouldn't be the only thing to strive for as far as persistency is concerned. Hence some other sort of reward system should be considered alongside it.

[AmPM]

Mysthalin, the issue of hitting T and retreating vet is valid. However its an easy fix.

Make games hidden as per the campaign game, don't even show level.

Revamp the rewards for playing with poorer players and the new player advantages.

If you win a game, all surviving units get XP, if you lose all units lose some XP. Done.

[tank130]

I do agree with you that the grind should be killed, shot in the face three or four more times just to make sure, cremated and then it's ashes scattered over the surface of Jupiter. It's not fun for quite frankly anybody. The devs share this opinion - and there's a system being put into place(or so I've heard) to ensure the grind does indeed die. A horrible and painful death, at that.

I disagree on the point of veterancy though. It doesn't take much skill to vet units up : you just need to press "T" early enough - the vet will come eventually : and it shouldn't be the only thing to strive for as far as persistency is concerned. Hence some other sort of reward system should be considered alongside it.

See, I knew you and I could have a rational conversation sooner or later  

I like the idea of a reward system as long as it does not boost your playing abilities. Something like the leader boards or medals attached to your game name. Something that helps boost your abilities by adding a fear factor, but keeps the gap between new and old close.

I agree that it can be easy to vet up, but you can't win games if you just keep retreating your units. The vet bonuses need to be kept balanced to avoid blobs of vetted units steam rollin' the field.

Balancing the vet is probably going to take some work.....

[AmPM]

Tank, if you consider the current vet bonuses it would actually be pretty easy.

Right now at vet 1 Grens get a 15% reduction in damage received.

Under the new vet you could do this:

Vet 1: .95 received damage
Vet 2: .90 received damage
Vet 3: .85 received damage

Giving you the same total as 1 vet level, but over multiple levels

So something like this

Grenadier:

Vet 1: .95 received damage
Vet 2: .90 received damage, 1.05 accuracy
Vet 3: .85 received damage, 1.10 accuracy
Vet 4: 1.15 accuracy, 1.05 health
Vet 5: 1.10 Health, 1.05 damage
Vet 6: 1.10 damage, Extra grenade
Vet 7: 1.15 damage, Medkit on cooldown
Vet 8: 1.20 damage, Access to Panzerfaust +20mu

At Vet 8 the Grenadier is equal in base stats to a Vet 3 gren currently, but has an extra nade, medkits on cooldown, and access to a cheap PFaust.

Combine with getting XP for your units for wins, and losing XP on units for losses, and a "blind" game lobby, and you have more vet levels, a real risk per game for losing, a good reward for winning, and hopefully less 1 sided games.

[tank130]

I like the direction you are taking that.

[AmPM]

Yea, its easy to balance out 10+ vet levels by just decreasing gain per level, you can also increase the XP required to fully vet, add in the lost XP for losing games and you have incentive to fight till you have to retreat.

[Computer991]

I support this.

[MorkaandBorka]

Combine with getting XP for your units for wins, and losing XP on units for losses

I would love to see that again

[ImmanioEiR]

Let me just chime in by saying that I really, really hope vet doesn't become the main persistency mechanism. Some of us have a playstyle that doesn't mesh well with vetting units. Personally I never seem to have more than a few vet 3 units in a company, if any. It's common knowledge among people I play a lot with that a unit reaching vet 3 is almost synonymous with a death sentence in the next game

[Grundwaffe]

would be a good change.
the longer armies stay away from level 9, the more fun the game is.

Unless the oppnonment is lvl 9 aswell -.-

[tank130]

Let me just chime in by saying that I really, really hope vet doesn't become the main persistency mechanism. Some of us have a playstyle that doesn't mesh well with vetting units. Personally I never seem to have more than a few vet 3 units in a company, if any. It's common knowledge among people I play a lot with that a unit reaching vet 3 is almost synonymous with a death sentence in the next game

This may be a good point. But I gotta say, I don't think I have ever had a vet 3 unit. In fact, I am pretty excited when I have a vet 1 unit.....lol

I honestly can't think of a better way to shorten the gaps between new or casual players and old time or game spammer players. Vet is the one thing we are all capable of achieving using skill rather than games played.
With a Vet system, even if I only have time to play 6 games a week, I can still go up against a strong player like Mysthalin in a fair fight based on our skills. I will need to learn a better skill of preserving my units, but that is an important skill to learn to be effective over all.

That being said, just because a player has a lot vetted units, does not necessarily mean he will play well with them. In fact, some players baby their vet so much, they will loose by attrition. This once again reinforces my argument that a Vet system will make the game more about skills than games played.

[brn4meplz]

I don't intentionally vet my units, but I frequently have vetted tanks from good control. If it needs to die to secure the win I'll throw it away. sometimes thats just not necessary.

My general rule of thumb is throw it in the fire. It it survives put it back in. If it survives that you might want to show it some attention.

I had a high vet Bren MMG, I've got a 470xp AVRE and I've had a 500xp CCT before. My high veterancy tends to stand on units which are notorious throwaways

[Mysthalin]

I like AmPm's suggestion of losses = loss in exp... With a "blind-game" system - it could work alright.
People will still want to play with their friends though - and a blind game system would sort of kill that...

[skaffa]

If you loose what you have gained, by losing a game, then there will be more dodging / stacking.

[AmPM]

It actually worked pretty well for a long long time Skaffa; as I said though, it also needs a rework of rewards for playing with poorer players.

[skaffa]

Then you will get a problem with defining 'poorer players'.

[tank130]

If you loose what you have gained, by losing a game, then there will be more dodging / stacking.

I see a potential for problems with this as well. Take myself for example. I am far from one of the better players. So higher skilled players will probably avoid playing with me as they may take a loss in their xp.
Stacking will always being stacking no matter what we do.

I am not sure I see the reasoning for loosing xp if you loose. What would be the benefit of this? I see it could stop people from trying to farm vet, but I don't think it's worth the sacrifice it would make on newer players.

I have never been a big fan of punishing people for not doing well. It is negative reinforcement, and that never works in the long run. However, positive reinforcement always works in the long run. Gaining vet is the reward for playing well. Having no vet is the result of not playing as well.

There will always be exceptions, but; structuring the mod to appeal to the majority will always be the most successful.

[AmPM]

Tank, if you remember, it was everyone gets XP for all units that survive a game, winning gets you extra, losing costs you some.

For infantry you would hover just above vet 2 even losing games, same with tanks and such. It was just the people with vet 3 hordes that had to worry about it.